Sunset and Evening Star
by ShadesOfMauve
Summary: ME3 unfolds rather differently than it did in game. Rhi Shepard wouldn't stand for anything else. (A sequel to A Star to Steer Her By).
1. Chapter 1

"Rhiannon Shepard."

"Yes."

The major said her name crisply, without hint of emotion, as he had the last time they'd done this dance, and the time before that. Gray walls, gray carpet. The room was the same, too: gray walls, gray carpet, no windows. Hard plastic seats for her questioners; none for her.

The uniformed batarian sitting with the Alliance team was new, and all four eyes were narrowed to dark, gleaming slits. They narrowed further at the sound of her name.

"Shepard," he growled. "I'd introduce myself, but we probably all look the same to you."

_No_, she thought, _I've killed too many of you for you to look alike._

She said nothing.

One of the humans, a man wearing the insignia of Alliance Intelligence, shot a cool glance at the batarian. "Pertinent questions only, Respected Observer." He turned back to Shepard, and asked in a bored tone, "Why did you go to the Bahak system?"

She clasped her hands together behind her back in a parade rest, feet evenly spaced on the floor, gaze steadily over the intelligence operative's shoulder. The wrist cuffs clinked together when she shifted, buzzing a little as their electrical fields came into contact.

"To extract an Alliance researcher from a batarian prison on Aratoht."

The intel guys had heard this before, twice on the ride from the Normandy to… wherever 'here' was — and twice since.

"And you found the researcher— a Dr. Kenson?"

"Yes."

"What had she been researching?"

"A reaper artifact. She said she had evidence of imminent invasion."

"Reapers," the batarian sneered.

The intelligence man raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Shepard. "Where did you go when you left Aratoht?"

"Dr. Kenson's research station, on an asteroid in the same system. The doctor told me that she'd determined the time until the reapers arrived in Bahak, and use the system relay to access the rest of the network. I went to her station to examine her evidence. Her team had rigged the asteroid with eezo propulsion and guidance systems, with the intent to crash it into the relay before the reapers could use it."

The batarian looked up, his voice ice. "Did you know that destroying the relay would kill everyone in the system? Including 300,000 of my people living on Aratoht?"

"Dr. Kenson said it was a possibility." She kept her voice neutral. "Mass Relays are not my area of expertise."

"What did you find at the base?"

"The researchers had all spent a great deal of time in proximity to the artifact, Object Rho. They no longer wished to stop the Reapers — they'd turned off the engines without completing the burn. They attacked me, and eventually drugged me unconscious. I was out for fourty-eight point five hours, by my omnitool clock."

She didn't mention that she'd already been knocked flat on her ass by the visions screaming into her head from the artifact, vast fleets of ships bigger than anything the Alliance had ever fielded, the red and orange of fire, the screams of dying planets. Object Rho had indoctrinated the research team, but to her it had shouted 'doom.'

Military interogators didn't like to hear about visions.

The questions continued. "And when you woke up?"

"I escaped."

The batarian snorted. "Drugged? Unarmed? Hmph. Unlikely."

She'd already admitted to breaking someone out of a batarian high-security prison. Compared to that, an Alliance research station had been easy. "I'm an Alliance marine. Special forces. And Council Spectre." She kept her voice flat. "I escaped."

One of the humans nodded, and the batarian let it go.

"Escaped, and?"

"I killed them." She met their eyes levelly. "And I started the engines back up."

—

—

_After all your years of service, the Alliance puts you right back where they found you. Jailed and starving_.

It had been six days since the last round of questions, as near as she could tell with no natural light. Six days without any contact except for the silent guard bringing her meagre ration. Six days without the sky, or the stars. Her moods swung viciously with her low blood-sugar, each sweep lower than the last.

Being alone made it infinitely worse.

She'd never been good at being alone. She defined her home with people. She collected them, made them hers. Did they know how much they'd stripped from her when they took away her radio? She wanted sound, contact, people she knew. Most of all she wanted to hear Joker, even though he'd be angry, maybe especially because he'd be angry. She'd thought turning herself in was the right thing to do; he hadn't.

She wished she could tell him he'd been right, and see his smug expression when she did.

_Does everyone imprisoned for suspected genocide get solitary? _Most of them committed their crimes from behind a desk. A clean uniform, a nice office, a home to go to after you'd signed the orders consigning whole peoples to death. No mud on your hands, no blood on your hands. No sweat. No split-second decision making, will-I-won't-I, what can I do, only me, here, _now_. Genocide was a crime of forethought; of planning. They called the perpetrators 'architects,' and someone else did their labor. Not her. She'd done it all; everything except the planning. The plan had always been Hackett's, and it had been abandoned in the rush of a too rapidly changing situation.

The final call had been hers, and she'd made it without a second thought, only a curse when the evacuation alerts she'd tried to send had failed.

She'd thought she was going to die then. Alone. _Everyone dies alone_. Who had said that? She remembered calling for the _Normandy_, sure it could never arrive in time, but wanting Joker's voice on her radio, a connection to push away the solitude. Wishing she could go out fighting, with her blood running high, instead of waiting. Waiting, watching, while the asteroid she rode hurtled towards a mass relay to set off an explosion that would doom an entire star system.

Waiting was the most deadly thing she'd ever done.

She remembered thinking _at least this time it won't be cold_.

She'd been wrong, of course. Joker was there, as he always had been, risking himself and the ship to whisk her away to safety beyond the relay.

Safety three hundred thousand batarians would never reach.

One inhabited planet was a small price to pay to hold back the reapers.

—

She paced in her cell.

Three meters.

Turn the corner.

Two meters.

Corner. Three. Corner. Two. Three. Two.

It made the small space feel even more cramped, but it helped her keep her mind off her stomach, twisting with hunger pangs. Gave her the illusion of control.

She'd spent an hour on stretches; another on calisthenics, bare feet battered by the cement floor. Now there was nothing to do but pace, and think. Bare feet on the cold floor, the prisoner's jumpsuit rustling as she moved.

She had to shorten her stride on the short side of the cell.

She was still pacing when the guards came for her. New ones, heavily armed. She almost laughed at the lengths they'd gone to prepare: six guards in body-armor, with stun guns and truncheons, to stand up to unamped, unarmed her. She thought about telling them not to worry, that she didn't have any asteroids handy, but that was too macabre a joke even for her, so she accepted her manacles and followed in silence.

She couldn't even stretch her legs properly before they lead her into another cell, this one decorated, incongruously, with a barber's chair.

She sat, watching the manacles affix themselves to the chair's arms at a gesture from the warden. Scissors snicked through her hair, heavy dark locks falling to the ground, leaving her feeling oddly light. There was no pattern to the cuts; just quick efficiency.

She flicked her eyes sideways and saw the barber reach for a razor.

That was too much.

_Back where they found you._

Her life was rewinding, spinning backwards, undoing everything she'd achieved. Now they'd take her hair, and she really would be back at the start; shaven, starving, alone. Powerless in a cell. No ship, no crew, no friends. No way to fight. No say in her future.

No chance to enlist for a fresh start, this time.

She pulled with all her will at her biotics, head pounding as she tried to pull power without an amp or physical gesture.

There was a tiny flicker of blue.

The razor flew out of the man's hand and embedded itself in the wall.

She sank against the chair, spent, and the orderly picked up another razor from the table and started to shave.

—

The next day, they showed up with a med tech, a batarian observer, and a biotics expert. The guards made her kneel while they slid the inhibitor into the implant at the base of her skull.

It felt like fingers crawling through her brain, leaving numbness where they touched.

—

_Pull it together._

The air was cool on her shaven head, and she clasped her hands behind her back to keep herself from touching the skin there, or prodding at the smooth surface of the biotic inhibitor nestled against the base of her skull.

_Ignore it._

The problem was, there wasn't much else to_do_.

_This isn't forever. It doesn't change me._

She grasped at the scraps of herself.

She was Rhi Shepard, a marine, and a damn good one. One-time commander of the _Normandy_, in both its incarnations.

_And both of mine. Heh_.

Wrex and Tali's friend. Nessie's almost-sister. Jeff Moreau's lover.

_You're not the scared kid on the street anymore._

_Keep it together, marine._

The cell felt the same, though.

_You trained for this._

_No._

_I trained for being captured by the enemy._

_We never trained for being captured by our friends._

—

When Geltz showed up outside her cell, she almost thought he was another vision from her past. The first familiar face she'd seen in days — weeks? It was hard to believe he was real, not a remembered figment from when she was sixteen, but gray was creeping into his thick black hair, and new lines crawling over olive skin.

When she approached the plas-glas she could look down on him, but she'd always been able to do that.

Her gut roiled with mixed emotion; relief at a familiar face, _any_familiar face, mixed with the bile of betrayal.

She'd tried to contact him, back when she was trying to put her life back together. It had been a hard message to write, but she'd _tried_, reaching out through the dark to the man who'd pulled her off the street, who'd always had faith in her.

He'd never responded.

Another part of the Alliance, eager to help her when she was useful and quick to ignore her.

_Why are you here now?_

"Shepard."

"Geltz."

"Madre de dios, but it took me ages to talk my way down here." He looked sorrowful; there were new lines around his eyes. "And I'm sorry I didn't reply to your message, those months ago. Things were... tricky, at the time. I couldn't be seen to have any contact with Cerberus."

She hadn't expected an apology. She wasn't _ready_for an apology.

"Oh, sure. Had to keep me at arm's length because of _Cerberus_." She spat the word. "Terrorists. Racists. Scum of the earth. But the _Alliance_are the ones sent me to commit genocide."

He stepped close to the glass. "Keep your mouth _shut_, Shepard! Don't say things like that!"

"Why fucking bother?" She turned away. "We both know how it has to end. Letting me go free would require admitting that I've been right about the reaper threat for years. Admitting that would mean admitting that some very important people were _wrong_." Her hands shook with rage and exhaustion. She was cold, too, shivering, the air chill against her bare scalp. She hadn't realized she was so cold.

"It would be easier if it didn't mean admitting that Cerberus was right about something, too."

"Is that really so damn hard? Stopped clocks and all that bullshit. At least the Illusive Man had the sense never to put me in the position that _Hackett_did." The name was a curse. She'd _respected _Hackett. She'd agreed to his favor so blithely; she'd been pleased to work for someone she could trust, instead of the Cerberus bastard. _Someone I _thought_I could trust._

She tried to remind herself that Hackett hadn't lied. _He was just wrong. What's the difference, when the fire starts?_

"Rhiannon, _please_. Complementing the Illusive Man isn't going to win you any points, either!"

"_Compliment_him?" She stuck her fingers through the holes in the plasglass, pulling herself close to glare into his eyes, and hissed, "If I wasn't in here, _the Illusive Man would be dead_."

"Shepard." His voice was a shocked whisper. "What the hell's gotten into you?"

Her stomach was cramped with hunger, and her hands shook with the desire to hit something. _Trapped and alone_. "If the Alliance wanted their good little toy soldier, maybe they shouldn't have broken it." It came out as an almost manic sing-song. "This is why we can't have nice things."

Her old mentor was staring at her as if she were a stranger.

She stepped back from the glass, growling.

His gaze followed her, eyes narrowed, then dropped to the place where she'd neatly wadded up the morning's ration wrapper in the plastic cup.

"What are they feeding you?"

"1500 calories a day." Standard intake for a female desk jockey; starvation rations for a tall, heavily-muscled biotic. She leaned back against the wall, suddenly feeling light-headed.

"Jesus Christ." Geltz looked angry, and not at her. "Jesus fucking _Christ_." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I'll see what I can do, Shepard. I have to figure out who signed off on that." _And beat some sense into them_, his tone implied.

Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. Maybe there were still friends here. Of course she could trust Geltz. Couldn't she?

_He used to let me hit him, as hard as I could, just because I was angry and confused and hormonal and he knew I needed something to hit._

Her memory supplied that feeling too easily; an out-of-control body, an abruptly changed life, the desire for a target. She'd already been taller than him, even half-starved as she was, but it hadn't mattered. Geltz was the Alliance ranking hand-to-hand expert, and when he decided he'd had enough he put her on the ground — and then taught her how to block it, and how to counter. He was ridiculously over-qualified to be giving one-on-one instruction to a street brat who wasn't even properly enlisted yet, but she hadn't been aware of the honor at the time.

He'd been the one to bring her in. He'd tackled her in a hospital, dragged her kicking and clawing to a recruitment office, seen her implanted. He'd kept track of her through her deployments, during officer's candidacy school, taken her to dinner when she learned she'd been tapped for Special Forces. He'd been the one to recommend her to Anderson, and eventually her berth on the _Normandy_.

He'd been thrilled when she made N7. He'd only gone to 5.

Geltz was the closest to family she'd ever had. She owed him an effort.

He was still staring at her, quiet.

She took a deep breath. "What," she tried, "What's going on? Out there?"

He jerked his head back towards the guard shadowing him. "It was all I could do to talk my way in here. I'll give you more detail later if I can, but for now — you're a political grenade with the pin pulled. No one can decide if they want responsibility for you or want to throw it to someone else. Everything is complicated beyond sense by your vanishing act three years ago. Anderson's arguing for you, and he carries a lot of weight, but the brass are divided, and trying not to let the batarians or the Council realize it." He shook his head. "You made one hell of a mess, kid."

"Figured as much." She didn't ask about Jeff, or the ship. Better if no one knew what she thought was important. "And I didn't 'vanish'."

He shot her a level look that meant she'd done something stupid and was about to reap the consequences. It had usually ended with her ass on the floor.

"I got blown out of a spaceship," she said meekly. "There's a difference."

"And showed up working for the wrong team."

"Only when I agreed with them. I _used_Cerberus." _And they used me._She still didn't like to talk about it, but she owed him. She swallowed."It's… hard to figure out quite what your options are, when, when you wake up missing two years, Alejandro."

Another deep breath.

"I don't know that I did everything right, but I tried. Did the work that needed doing. Sent back intel on Cerberus whenever I could. Stole their ship when it was all over."

He just watched her. Maybe he was as confused as she was, inside.

She grinned weakly. "Think you and Anderson can get me dubbed a retroactive double agent?"

That startled a snort out of him.

She bit back the laughter that threatened to bubble out, utterly inane given the circumstances. Of course the Alliance couldn't make such an absurd claim. If they had enough foresight to plant a spy by killing her, letting her corpse fall into the hands of a pseudo-terrorist group, and waiting for said pseudo-terrorist group to bring her back to life so that she could work for them, well... an organization with that kind of vision wouldn't be playing a losing game against galactic chaos.

The guard, who had been waiting at a discreet distance, stepped up to Geltz' shoulder. "Time's up, sir."

Geltz nodded. "Hang in there, Rhiannon. Don't dig yourself any deeper."

She watched him go until he passed beyond the security wall, leaving her alone once more.

* * *

_ Author's Note_

Hi all!

To readers of _A Star to Steer Her By_: I'm glad you stuck around while I took my long break!

To those who haven't read it: I think _Sunset and Evening Star_ will stand on its own, but if anything strikes you as odd about Joker and Rhi's relationship, or my characterizations, or the rare and confusing OC that crops up, it was probably explained in the previous fic. (Or I just screwed up - I do reserve the right to blunder, on occasion.)

To everyone: due to the pressing nature of real life, I have no idea whether I'll be able to see this through to where I envision it ending, which is after the events of ME3. A Star To Steer Her By took slightly under two years to complete, and when I started I posted a chapter a week - a schedule I know I can't manage at the moment. That said, I'm committed to at *least* getting the commander back to her ship (and her pilot). I'll re-evaluate the project at that point.

Lastly, I am always happy to have errors pointed out to me. I tend to long chapters, and despite my best efforts some typos do slip by.


	2. Chapter 2

**Please note:** _I think some people might find small parts of this chapter quite disturbing, but I'm not sure how to warn for it, so: If you're likely to be unduly bothered by 'medical' procedures without consent, please read carefully._

_(Everyone *should* be bothered, of course, but some people may require teddy bears or something on stand-by)._

* * *

Joker's 'cell' was a small-but-serviceable. A narrow bunk, a hard chair, an empty desk - more personal space than he'd had aboard the _Normandy_ in either of its incarnations. He could sleep without earplugs, and didn't have to listen to Donnelly or Robson snoring. The lack of window bothered him, but he wasn't in much of a position to complain.

_Ayup. Look on the bright side. You're held on suspicion of terrorism and they took the woman you love away in chains, but hey, no room-mates! Score!_

Black humor wasn't quite the same as stoicism, but it'd do. If nothing else, he knew Shepard would be frickin' _furious_ if he let himself slip back into the grim depression he'd inhabited after her death.

It was surprisingly comforting to think of her being angry at him. For one thing, for her to be angry at him properly they'd have to be able to _talk_ to each other.

He hadn't talked to her since Arcturus.

They'd planned to take the _Normandy_ to Earth. 'Show up on Earth, and show up in your dress blues', Hackett had told Shepard. He hadn't warned them about the Seize-And-Detain order in the Arcturus system.

It had felt unfair, having her taken so soon. Arcturus or earth, it shouldn't matter, he'd tried to tell himself. What difference would a few more hours of travel time have made? But it still stung. There had been something noble about flying to Earth to turn themselves in. Stupid, yeah, but noble. Idiotic romantic heroism of the kind Rhi normally didn't go in for. Having their ship boarded and being hauled off in cuffs had really destroyed the style of the whole thing, and style had been the only thing they had going for them at that point.

Even then, neither of them had suspected that he'd be arrested, too.

The Alliance had been slow to name Cerberus a terrorist organization, worried about the effect admitting to humanity's darker parts might have on their fledgling galactic reputation, especially given the group's former ties to Alliance black ops. Once they had a state-of-the-art frigate within their reach, that reluctance had disappeared. The official designation had come down while he and Shepard were incommunicado, in FTL to Arcturus. When the MPs arrived to take in Shepard, they'd also brought a prize crew, and the legal justification for the seizure of the _Normandy _—and, incidentally, one Jeff Moreau, now officially an employed member of a recognized terrorist group, a switch of legal standing that had happened while he was sitting on his ass, watching one last shitty movie with his deadly war-hero/criminal girlfriend, who was eating all the popcorn.

He'd gone from 'licensed civilian contract pilot' to 'terrorist' with the stroke of a pen. He couldn't even argue the change; they'd investigated Cerberus 'research' centers back when he was still Alliance, flying the first _Normandy_, and Shepard had been one of the people arguing _for_ the label. Nothing he'd heard or seen since had convinced him otherwise. Cerberus were terrorists, all right — and more than terrorists; criminals in every conceivable possible way. The attacks on aliens that had earned them the designation didn't even compare to the secret testing they'd done on their own kind. Cerberus was as bad as they came.

That didn't mean_ Shepard_ was, or the people who followed her. A fact he tried to explain every chance he got, which turned out to be pretty often. The Alliance brass didn't have that much interest in him, exactly, but they made up for it with interest in his ship, in Cerberus, and in Shepard.

"It's enough to make a guy feel unloved," he said, the next time the woman taking notes asked about Rhi. _Shepard_, he reminded himself. _Commander Shepard, to you. _Ex_-commander Shepard._

She raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"All these questions about the Illusive Man and Shepard. Never any about me. It's like you realize that I'm _actually really boring_ and there's no reason to be holding me here at all."

His interrogator didn't say anything. She was good, this one – she didn't let anything slip, unlike some of her colleagues. He was pretty certain she was trained as a shrink, too. She was evaluating him, even if her questions were about other things. The only chink in her armor he'd found yet was when he'd joked that it was time for his daily questioning, and were they finally going to use the rack this time? She'd visibly winced. She clearly didn't approve of torture.

_Hooray for small mercies_.

They hadn't been totally unprepared for this. EDI had artfully reshuffled almost a years' worth of internal surveillance records to make them fit for official Alliance consumption. All hints of the true extent of his relationship with Shepard were gone, snippets of vid and audio replaced with loops of empty hallways and routine maintenance tasks.

The hardest part had been determining what to leave. Just like the hardest part of talking with the shrinks was deciding what to tell. He'd realized early on that he couldn't go too easy on Shepard. If he kept insisting that everything had been _normal_ they'd either think he was lying or she was a freak. She'd come back from the dead after two years. Acting normal after that would have been really freakin' _strange_. But in his head all of those early personal conversations, all the anger and confusion, the drinking that had marred the first weeks of her new life… it was all private, personal, things she'd shared with him and no one else.

And somehow it all lead inexorably to her kissing him in her quarters.

_That never happened_, he told himself. Those records had been wiped.

Not _this_ record, though.

"What can you tell me about this video, Mr. Moreau?"

He watched it play out, low-res footage from a monitor in the observation lounge, almost a year old. Rhi's scars hadn't yet closed all the way, and they glowed with an eerie red light. She stood silhouetted against a window, looking rather less striking than usual from the camera's fish-eye perspective. He stood near the door, looking small and… _shit_. He hadn't realized he'd looked so terrified.

His arm was in a brace. She'd broken it the night before.

"She – Shepard – was scared." She'd hate having her weaknesses so clearly stated almost as much as she hated having them, but weaknesses made them human. Perfect people didn't pass psych evals. "She… she said she remembered dying. It gave her spacer's agoraphobia, I think."

"Mm. And can you confirm that this was taken the day after a social gathering in the commander's quarters?"

"Yes." She'd fallen asleep on his shoulder. It had only been the second time she'd touched him. "That's when my arm – that's when she broke my arm."

"Mm, yes. And the log of that event is strangely absent – as are most records of events in Shepard's quarters."

_Dammit, what are you digging for_? His own guilt kept pulling at him, convincing him that they knew, that they were just trying to give him enough rope to hang himself – which was stupid, because he hadn't been Alliance personnel at the time, so whatever he and Shepard had done wasn't fraternization and certainly wasn't any of their business. _You're paranoid_. He felt naked without a hat, and hoped his confusion didn't show on his face. "Shepard sabotaged the pick-ups. Early on, I think. She didn't like Cerberus watching everything."

The analyst nodded and made a mark on her notepad. "She _told_ you that?"

"Uh – about not liking Cerberus, or sabotage?"

The analyst just looked at him.

"'Cause, I think she told everybody about Cerberus – including them. At length. And the bugs came up a few times…" he racked his brain. "Oh, maybe at that party, I think."

"What happened at the party?"

_Good lord. What did happen at the party? Who remembered details like that?_ "Uh... it was low key. Just talking. Telling stories, catching up. It was almost a year ago; I don't remember exactly."

"'We' – that would be the turian Garrus Vakarian, yourself, Shepard, and doctor Karin Chakwas?"

Had Tali been there too? It wouldn't be good to get tripped up on something so stupid. No, that was before she'd rejoined the crew. "Yup, just us. People who'd been together on the SR1."

She nodded and tapped the controls, pulling up another bit of year-old archived vid.

Joker winced, but watched, dutifully.

He didn't like the vid. It was bad enough to see himself on screen. His self-image never quite matched the reality, and the reality was… disappointing. A harsh reminder of how others must see him all the time. He was at _least_ an inch taller in his head, for one thing.

What was worse was seeing Rhi as she'd been then, and not being able to go back in time and _do_ anything about it. He'd known she was struggling, but he hadn't realized the extent at the time. She'd still been his commander, usually distant. Now he knew her so much better, he could look at that old vid and see how much she'd been hurting, the frustration bleeding around the edges of the mask. He wondered if the shrink could see it.

He wanted to watch more recent footage – to see her in action, full of life and adrenaline, or relaxed and happy. He wished EDI hadn't kept to her word, and he could look at vid of her sleeping in his arms, or laughing about something stupid. Flying carrots around on a fork, pretending they were collector ships. Seeing her back then, struggling to live the life she'd been brought back to, just made him afraid for her in a way he hadn't been before.

"It's an Alliance prison, not a batarian slave camp," Rhi had said, while they waited for the MPs to dock and take her away. But that didn't mean she was doing okay_ right now_.

—

Days went by before Rhi saw Geltz's promised rations. Instead of food came a swarm of medics and their accompanying guard, who ushered her into yet another identical cell and strapped her into yet another chair.

She started preparing for pain; taking deep, even breaths, making a space to go away inside her head, but all they wanted was blood. Rather a lot of blood, drawn off into vials whose labels she couldn't read._ Not medics. Researchers_.

She'd no idea what they were looking for, and they weren't telling. They'd already taken a new DNA print, and as far as she knew there was nothing strange about her blood that wasn't put there by an official Alliance gene mod – the standard package most marines had. She was hustled into a portable diagnostic imager, then back to her cell.

The tiny glass of orange juice they gave her to make up for the fluid loss tasted like heaven. She wanted six more.

The impersonal efficiency of the researchers made her feel almost as if Geltz had never come. Like the orange juice, it had been just enough to remind her of what she was missing. She was still slipping, and she knew it. One visit from an old friend wasn't enough to counter starvation and isolation – but two days later the _actual_ medics came, and made tutt-tutting noises at the guard, the warden, and her (as if she'd had any choice about anything) while they examined her with omni tools.

That night, her ration was doubled, and she slept well for the first time since she'd turned herself in.

—

It was EDI who rescued Joker from his incarcerated tedium. At first he assumed the alliance intel people had just gotten as tired of him as he was of them, but then he was told he was getting assigned (dragooned? conscripted? what did they call convict labor?) into the _Normandy_ refit project. That didn't make a damn bit of sense. He was a pilot, not a mechanic.

It continued to not-make-sense until he walked onto the _Normandy_ again and was confronted by a red-faced engineer who practically wailed "YOU! You should be able to talk to this damned VI!"

That still didn't make sense, actually, but at least it told him that EDI was behind it all.

From a small speaker above them, EDI said "Voice print not recognized. I'm sorry; I cannot respond to your commands."

"And MAKE IT STOP DOING THAT!"

Joker took an involuntary step back at the force of the man's shout, and almost tripped over the two marine privates who'd been tasked with preventing his dangerous terrorist escape.

"Doing what?"

"Not only is it unresponsive to anything useful, _every damn time_ anyone so much as _mentions_ that V ahh – ahem, highly complex computer program, it plays the same message! Everywhere on the ship!"

The engineer cast his eyes heavenward, and Joker realized he wasn't just shouting out of frustration. He was also wearing earplugs. As were the three juniors hard at work behind him.

"Um, EDI?"

"Senior Helmsman Jeffrey Moreau, recognized." The artificially produced voice had a decidedly happier tone to it. "Welcome aboard, sir."

"Careful, you're milking it," he whispered under his breath. EDI's receivers were scarily good; they'd pick it up. In a normal voice he added "Uh, stop playing automated security message 1-3-9-2-b, would you? You're driving people nuts." _Numbers make stuff sound official, right?_

"Understood, sir."

The harried engineer practically fell on Joker's feet in gratitude, and rushing techs soon provided Joker with a chair and a (highly monitored) system interface, in an unfinished space near what had been the armory.

"I could hug you, EDI," he said.

"No, you couldn't. 'I' am intangible. And the computer banks housing my main processes are too large to be easily encompassed by your arms. However, I understand that the intent is approbatory. Thank you."

He shook his head and smiled for the first time in weeks. It wasn't the helm, but it was a damn good start.

—

The next time the researchers came to Shepard's cell, they wanted more than blood and scans. Fed and rested, she was ready for them; cool, stoic, unmovable. Back to a chair again; strapped in, again. They injected a local anesthetic, and then the scalpel split the skin, following a track that the Cerberus resurrection process had left, the thin scar pale against her brown forearm.

She looked away, but caught a thin gleam of silver amid the red. She didn't know whether it was a tool, or _her._

The techs spoke only briefly to each other, and never to her, everything couched in so much medical jargon that she only understood one word in three. Upgrades to ligaments and tendons; something about muscle fiber. Special alloys and a biochemical whazzit.

Soon the pain seeped back in, first as a half-numb queasy feeling, then the the sting and burn of tools and fingers on raw flesh. She could have breathed through it, called on the anti-interrogation training she'd never really had cause to use… but what would be the point? Instead, she announced that the local had worn off several minutes ago, and she was going to have a hard time keeping still.

One of the techs had the decency to look appalled; the others were just excited about her abnormally fast drug response.

_They'll want to test that now, too_.

Another drug was administered, and the sick-numb feeling came creeping back, bringing with it a mind-dulling fog. When it cleared, she was back in her cell, arm neatly sutured and sealed with a strip of medigel. She examined the incision, flexing the muscles in her forearm to make sure it wouldn't break, and started a set of crunches.

The silent treatment of the researchers, cutting on her without her permission – that was supposed to break her, but it wasn't going to. She wouldn't let it. She had work to do.

There were still reapers to fight, after all.

Preparing for the worst was useless, so she worked under the assumption that they'd let her out eventually, and she needed to be ready. Her body was the only weapon available to her in the cell, and she honed it. The reapers were out there.

Her crew was out there, too, scattered to the edges of the galaxy and hopefully keeping off the radar of both the Alliance and Cerberus, waiting to be useful again. Just like she was. She thought about them instead of the impersonal researchers or the silent guards: Chakwas, who patched people up with a combination of dry humor and scolding; Tali, who'd grown up so damn much, who was probably advising the quarian flotilla right now; Garrus, who'd gone back to his government, presumably in better straits than she had hers. Joker.

They were all just waiting.

_It will happen._

After a length of time measured only in sleep, meals and the occasional visits of the curious wanting to cut her open or scan a new bit of her cybernetic insides, Geltz returned. He looked even more harried than before.

"D'you have enough food, now?"

She nodded.

"Good. You do look better." He smiled. "Sorry it took so long to sort out."

"Only a few days." She'd had the food long enough to get used to it, but she'd missed seeing a friendly face. "Could've done with another visit, though. I realize I wasn't the best company when you were down here before, but you could at least've come for the view." She gestured at the cement-and-tile walls.

Geltz winced. "Wish I could've, but Anderson and I've been fighting for you, and your position is precarious enough without giving them grounds to ask about my 'emotional involvement.' As for the short rations, the solitary…" He scowled, gesturing his frustration. "Some of these assh – perdón, _diplomatic-types _want to 'appease' the batarians by making a show of hard treatment. Only some of 'em are more into the 'show' part than others. Everything's supposed to have been okayed by the brass Ethics Counsel — yeah, you're a thorn in the side of some really important people right now, lucky you — but it turns out the bit they okayed used some pretty vague language."

He grinned. "I managed to convince certain parties to interpret it differently."

"I suppose it's too much to hope you got a secretary in a headlock?"

"Jesús, no, I've gotten old and embedded in politics, Rhiannon." He snorted. "I've been arguing it won't do the Alliance any good to have you looking like you'd been abused. Can't have that crap on our image."

Did he know about the medical tests? If he did, he couldn't do anything about them._ If he didn't know… better he doesn't know_. Water under the bridge.

"If you're worrying about appearances, does that mean they're going to let me outta here? Take me for a walk around the block, maybe?" Anything to leave her isolated little hell.

"The hearing's in five days."

She started. Five days; a measurement of time, a promise for the future. An acknowledgment that there _wa_s a future.

Geltz misjudge the reason for her reaction. "It's only preliminary. From what I gather the Powers That Be are still trying to figure out jurisdiction. We've got, last time I asked, Alliance Mil, Alliance Civ, and the Batarian Hegemony all asking for you, and the Citadel Council going back and forth on whether it wants your or not – a position they feel _very strongly about_, whichever direction they happen to be leaning at the time."

"It's so nice to be wanted," she murmured.

He scowled. "Not for what you've done."

She couldn't argue with that. "Is there anything I should know before the hearing? Not that I have a whole lot to get ready..." she gestured to her empty cell.

"Not much. You will have counsel – everyone but the batarians agreed on that – but I doubt they'll ask you much. Just deciding jurisdiction, remember."

"Right. So… Batarians, Council, Alliance command, Alliance senate… who I should be rooting for, here?" She raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing _not_ the batarians."

He stepped close to the grill, thick fingers clenching through the holes in the plastic. "The Alliance, Rhiannon. Always the Alliance. You're a marine. You'll be a marine whatever label the Citadel Council sticks on you." He squeezed the grill in emphasis. "Just make it through the hearing. We're gonna win this thing, and then we'll be able to get you out of this place. We take care of our own."

—

The shipyard where the _Normandy_ was berthed had worker housing, presumably to save temps and specialist the absurd cost of living in the Vancouver area. Joker exchanged his cell for a room not too much bigger that reminded him of his dorm in flight school. He wasn't allowed to converse with the legitimate repair yard hands, but apparently no one wanted to give him special treatment either, so he took his meals in the dock workers' cafeteria; a dingy, depressing room that smelled of over-warmed grease and despair.

(So he was a bit melodramatic. So sue him).

The watchful glare of Marine Private Campbell dogging his steps kept everyone else well away as he went through the chow line and headed for his usual solo table. Of course, the constant armed guard also attracted every curious eye in the room, but after a month or so the outright stares died down to the occasional furtive glance.

As far as he knew, the staff who worked at the Abbotsford shipyard hadn't been told anything about who he was, why he was a prisoner, or what he was there to do. From a few snippets of overheard conversation he'd gathered that the current theory was that he was a black-hat hacker who was serving out his sentence plugging security holes for the good guys. That was a common enough practice, and it explained both the guard (can't let him too close to the security systems; who knows what he could do!) and his limp (sure, he's a cripple, but it doesn't matter if he just plays with computers, right?).

Sometimes he spun stories of his imaginary hacker alter-ego just to keep himself entertained. He'd probably hacked payroll – no, that was boring. The financial accounts of a gray market arms dealer; that was more the ticket. Or Alliance top secret intel. Much more glamorous.

He was in the cafeteria, spinning mental tales of his past hacking exploits, when he saw Shepard again for the first time in weeks.

The monitors around the room played the same pre-selected stations day and night; a monotonous, annoying drone. One for sports, one for news, and one, for some reason, old childrens' cartoons. Joker usually chose to face the cartoons. At least they were different from day to day – even if some things, like over-sized cartoon mallets, appeared to be enshrined in holy cartoon tradition.

Most days he wished for a cartoon mallet big enough to destroy all memories of the taste of required-daily-nutrient muck #3. He was steeling himself to force another bite down his throat when the room grew quiet. He set down the spoon, glad of the excuse, and twisted to see what everyone was staring at.

For a moment he couldn't tell what the fuss was about. A simultaneous roar from the sports program and KAPANG! from the cartoons momentarily drowned out the voice-over on the newscast, and the video showed only a dense crowd, civilian suits interspersed with blue Alliance uniforms.

Then the newscast switched cameras, and he saw Rhi.

She looked _wrong_. Her thick hair was shorn close to her scalp, face devoid of her customary makeup. Her posture was still marine-tall, but were her cheeks too gaunt, or was it just the severe haircut?

The vid was shot from far off with a long zoom, distorting detail, and she kept disappearing between the heads of the crowd. He wanted to shout at the people in the vid to get out of the damn way, or leap up and shout her name, as if the TV was a comm channel.

The cafeteria had gone quiet. Someone raising their voice in the far corner was shushed. Someone else finally found the volume control.

"…the famous – or infamous – Commander Shepard, leaving the courtroom now. No cameras were allowed inside, but our sources describe a tense discussion of jurisdiction," the announcer paused, "…ending in favor of Alliance Military Command."

There were scattered cheers from around the cafeteria, but Joker didn't know whether it was good or bad. He hadn't known that the jurisdiction was ever in question, or who would have decided Rhi's fate if not Alliance Command. He didn't know what the news had been saying, that a cafeteria full of dock hands was paying attention to the outcome. He didn't know _anything_.

He didn't know whether she was okay.


End file.
